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Recalculating the Route
After years of nonstop hustle, startup founder Kate Volzer, MBA ’14, traveled to the Andes, Bali, and Utah.
- By
- November 05, 2025
- Entrepreneurship
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After Kate Volzer, MBA ’14, sold her edtech startup, Wisr, to EAB in 2021, she stayed with the company for two years as managing director. By 2023, she was ready to leave—and had the means to take time off.
“Running a company is all-consuming; I’d wake up in the middle of the night worried about running out of cash,” she says. “Then you go through this exit event. It’s what you wanted, and you’re financially better off—but it’s a big change. I needed to figure out who I was without Wisr and let myself want what I wanted—not what investors or family wanted.”
Volzer liked the idea of a sabbatical as a way to reconnect with her instincts.
“A cousin said, ‘You can do anything you want; go skiing in Patagonia!’ I thought Argentina sounded good, so I decided to start there.”
Volzer’s sabbatical lasted from March to September 2023, and encompassed Argentina, Florida, Bali, Utah, New England, upstate New York, and Ohio. When planning the first leg, she signed up with an adventure-travel group to do ice hiking, kayaking, and mountain trekking.
Argentina included little downtime. “It was extroversion, adventure, party.” Five days in, she experienced an epiphany. “We’d just flown from Buenos Aires to El Calafate and went to dinner in this ancient cave with paintings. We’re at the beach, wearing ponchos, and seeing a sunset over this clean, blue, beautiful water. I thought, ‘This was a really good idea.’ Nobody was there besides our group; it felt untouched, and it was nice to feel small after feeling like the center of the microcosm of my work.”
After Argentina, she hit a Florida beach with her family and then headed to Bali, where she visited temples and learned prayers in between “lots of spas and pool time.”
The next phase was in southern Utah, where Volzer rented a Winnebago to explore the national parks in the area. “A friend lives in Salt Lake City, and we hung out a few nights,” Volzer says. “Otherwise, I was on my own, hiking and adventuring.”
Out in the desert, she reflected on her future. “I focused on what I wanted to release from the Wisr chapter, so I could figure out what was next.”
Volzer’s sabbatical began in Argentina.
Volzer went hiking with a travel group in Argentina.
Bali was the third stop on Volzer’s sabbatical.
Volzer visited temples and learned prayers in Bali.
A mountain in Bali.
Volzer rented a Winnebago to explore national parks in Utah.
The final phase of Volzer’s sabbatical included time in New England.
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Volzer notes that this time of travel and reflection helped get her through the “quiet” period that happens with founders who sell their companies. “At first, everybody’s reaching out. There are interviews and dinners. But when the dust settles, you’re like, ‘Now what?’”
Her travels led her to reprioritize. “Some founders can’t wait to do it all again. But I realized I enjoyed having the flexibility for adventure and family time,” she says.
Volzer spent her final sabbatical phase in New England (Maine and Vermont) and upstate New York, then in northeast Ohio with her family. “I played tennis, golfed, read trashy books. Spent time with my niece and nephew at my family’s place on Lake Erie. I got good at smoking meat on a Green Egg.”
By August 2023, Volzer started to integrate work back into her life, serving as interim CEO for a nonprofit. Then she began consulting for Progressive Insurance, which turned into her current role as revenue director at Level20, Progressive’s new-business incubator.
One takeaway for Volzer is that rest, while important, means different things to different people. “Some people do nothing—sit on the beach, take naps—but if you have trouble being idle, layer in something productive.”
The second is to remember your humanity. “Boothies put pressure on ourselves to be high performers, often without recognizing the need for being human. But if you neglect that, you’re not whole, and then you can’t bring your whole self to work.”